IN THE SHADOW OF PEARLS (Anonymous)

In the Shadow of Pearls
The glow of a pearly light waits . . .
Among gritty coral, silky sodden, sodden sand.
Granite is a rock-like substance
Little rocks, big rocks
Boulders commit sin.
In gold mines, who will silver find?
Copper in a conch shell . . .
Golden lava, a silver smith bears, bears down
Flow .. .. Glow .. .. Shine!

Rivers, alluvial, saline and fresh water
Ripples of tumbling little stones, pebbles
and pearls.
Come sit, see, Liquid gold. Value
Silver, copper, all metals and . . .
Iron
In the shadow of Pearls.

Throw flames receive stones, rocks
boulders abound
Solomon creeps in the crevices
of rocky crags, pillars of tall salt.
Bombarding particles, pebbles
flint, corrugated sheets of
Tin!

Money in bronze,
Paper in a water mark
Pearls!
A profusion, an accumulation of . . . .
Swine!
Shadows! Shadows!
Show down!
Shadow.
Shadows, shadows of Man, God
Grow, rise, descend, disperse
A pearl glows . . .A pearl glows at night.
Shadows fall,fall shadow
Casting night shadows
Shadows . . . .
In the shadow of . . .Pearls.

DARK NIGHTS OF THE SOUL by Thomas Moore


Some people appear to give up on love, and you see the life-lessness in their faces. The soul craves,
and if you give up on love because it is so difficult, the life will seep out of you like air out of a punctured tire. You will go flat. You may wonder why life has no meaning. You may not realize
that meaning is love, and it is love that gives life its shape and purpose.

Clearly, love is not about making you happy. It is a form of initiation that may radically, making you more of who you are walking on coals and running the gauntlet and surviving the wilderness in quest of a vision-all within the confines of a simple human relationship-you could be undone by it. Love gives you a sense of meaning, but it asks a price. It will make you ino the person you are called to be, but only if you endure its pains and allow it to empty you as much as it fills you.

*** ** ***

OCTAVIO PAZ ON MEXICO CITY, MEXICO.


truth of lived and suffered.
An almost empty taste remains;
shared fury
time
shared oblivion-:
in the end transfigured
in memory and its incarnations.
What remains is
time as portioned body: language.
In the window, travesties of battle:
the commercial sky of advertisments
flares up, goes out.
Behind, barely visible,
the true constellations.
Among the waters, antennas, rooftops,
a liquid column,
more mental than corporeal,
a waterfall of silence:
the moon.
Neither phantom nor idea:
once a goddess,
today an errant clarity.
My wife sleeps.
She too is a moon,
A clarity that travels
not between the reefs of the clouds,
but between the rocks and wracks of dreams:
she too is a soul.
She flows below her closed,
a silent torrent
rushing down
from her forehead to her feet,
she tumbles within.
bursts out from within,
her heartbeats sculpt her,
travelling through herself,
she invents herself,
inventing herself
she copies it,
she is an arm of the sea
between the islands of her breasts,
her belly a lagoon
where darkness and its foliage
grow pale,
she flows through her shape,
rises, falls,
scatters in herself, ties
herself to her flowing,
disperses in her form:
she too is a body.
Truth
is the swell of a breath
and the visions closed eyes see:
The palpable mystery of the person.

The night is at the point of running over.
It growslight.
The horizon has become aquatic
To rush down
from the heights of this hour:
will dying
be a falling or a rising,
a sensation or a cessation?
Iclose my eyes,
I hear in my skull
the footsteps of my blood,
time pass through my temples.
I am still alive.
The room is covered with woman.
Woman;
fountain in the night.
I am bound to her quiet flowing.

**** ********** *****

PERILS IN PARADISE, WANT ONE?

Soliloquys on a Saturday night?
Have you ever . . . . eaten
marshmallows on Mars?

Daniel reading books, suntanning on
boulders shiny, rocks bright.
Moses visiting Job. . . Oh My God!
Baskets and weathering, cajole and lamenting.

Buttercups, cream and strawberry jam?
Going upriver, will meet you at the bank.
Croissants in Ireland. play horses at the Met.
Folklore, pastors, heathens, sing songs on a
Friday - that s club night Solly!
Bingo, mi lady.

Drive a kite, rise above a hot air balloon-
Energy!
Four by four, what's blue and hanging by its knees?
Throw a thread, retrieve a ball, Have a
lascivious evening!

Crocs on the trot, misery! Jello and Baker's custard
for all who are good.
Cleanse a jar, lick clean a bowl,
An amphora's a statue, filled with freebies.

On a plane - that's going a long way away.
Dry tears, suck mints, drink coffee bitter, cold
Whoever goes may never come back!
Oil a propellor, bounce on the wings.
The weather forecast says wet, wet, stone grey.

Where there's a globe there's a by pass
coming back on another day.
Parasites? No way! cosmos, life, spawn
Time echoes and days trip by.

Peril? beryl? Green, a stone.
Paradise's just a footstep away.
Fool's, coots, wolves, transparencies
Peril? A Fool's gotta stay.
Amphora, banks, strawberry jam!

&&&& &&&& - - - &&&& &&&&

g







d

PINK SLIPPERS AND A WELLINGTON COAT. (Anonymous).

Wear pink slippers and a Wellington coat
if your planning on coming to the Easter Parade.
Gerald will be there, with his three squirrels, this year.
Did you get your invite?
Have you got pink slippers?
And from whom did you borrow your Wellington Coats?
Marcia will be selling tickets at Paddington Station.
Come early. Marcia says the train leaves at four.
Marshmallows in hot chocolate will be sold on the train.
Bring 5p if you like.
Only one per customer. Mind your greed!
Dont tell friends!
Every year the tents are full to bursting.
Cora and Stuart will be doing their usual act,
riding their white ponies, bareback and backwards.
Apples for the horses will be much appreciated!
Nugget and Arnold will be going round with sacks.
Melvin promises lots of bunny tricks
and Freddy's going to be doing the usual,
His Famous Ventriloquist show.
Harold the Hatter won't be with us. His mum's ill
and there isn't anyone to take his place.
John with his firesticks amd Mercia with her midgets
Will be ther as always, quite the highlight.
Candyfloss, peppermint squares, homemade lemonade
are just some of the treats in store for all.
So get out your slippers and be borrowing a wellie coat
Don't be late!
Friday 22nd, thats a Saturday, 4pm, Paddington Square.

***

CORONATION & FLEABAGS (Anonymous)

Echolocate?
Frisbees in a chocolate place,
Who wants a friend?
Ariel, Jacob, Nebby (Nebucchadnezzar)
Yay! They've come to stay,
6 days, 8 nights.
Ariel's got a puppy
We put him in the paddock with
Zot the horse and Gillian the filly.

Nebby's got a cold again!
Camphor? Eucalyptus?
That's no good. Ariel gave him some
zinggers and jelly babies.
Sad Neb, sack cloth ashes
No frisbee! Nebby's like a bat, he .....
Echolocates.
Jacob has a snake, he lives in .. ..
Popeye's tree.

Ariel, Jacob, Nebby,
Two blacks, one white,
Sophia - that's Moly's maid
has made caramel pie.
"Oh Molly, Nebby's lactose intolerant
and Jacob's ADDH!
Its only me who'll eat your pie.
Sugar makes Jacob jitter and Nebby?"
Sophia says "Oh Nebby for Goodness sake
Don't be a coot. Soya milk? Is that right?
Nothing but soya in Sophia's caramel pie"
"Sophie, Jacob said its caramel TART not pie!"

Echolocate. A childless mother
A blindfolded blind date.
Cherries on a bower, roses on a cake.
Ariel's baby angel doll has a broken wing.
Jacob's crying for cake, he can't eat tart or pie.
Nebby, Nebucchadnezzar's standing on the curb
selling watermelon seeds from Arthur's
Fruit garden down by Gespatch creek.

Echolocate.
Three children, Sophie, Molly,
At Arthur's place.
Coronation? thats Hearts and Dark Cards.
Fleabags? Carrion and vultures farts!

SAN ILDEFENSO NOCTURNE by Octavia Paz on Mexico City, Mexico


Circular plot:
we have all been,
in the Grand Theater of Filfth,
judge, executioner, victim, witness,
we have all
given false testimony
against the others
and against ourselves,
And the most vile: we
were the public that applauded or yawned in its seats.
The guilt that knows no guilt,
innocence
was the greatest guilt.
Each year was a mountain of bones.
Conversions, retractions, excommunications,
reconciliations, apostasies, recantations,
the zigzag of the demonaltries and androlatries
bewitchments and aberrations
mt history
Are they the histories of an error?
history is the error.
Beyond dates,
before names,
truth is that
which history scorns:
the everyday
-everyone's anonymous heartbeat,
the unique
beat of every one-
the unrepeatable
everyday, identical to all days.
Truth
is the base of a time without history.
The weight
of the weightless moment:
a few stones in the sun

seen long ago,
today return,
stones of time that are also stone
beneath this sun of time,
sun that comes from a dateless day,
sun
that lights up these words,
sun of words
that burns out when they are named.
Suns, words. stones ,
burn and burn out:
the moment burns them
without burning,
hidden, unmoving, untouchable,
the present-not its presences-is always.
Between seeing and making,
contemplation or action,
I chose the act of words:
to make them, inhabit them,
to give eyes to the language.
Poetry is not truth:
it is the ressurection of presences,
history
transfigured in the truth of undated time.
Poetry,
like history, is made;
poetry,
suspension bridge between history and truth,
is not a path toward this or that:
it is to see

the stillness in motion,
change
in stillness
History is the path:
it goes nowhere,
we all walk it,
truth is to walk it.
We neither go nor come:
we are in the hands of time.
Truth:
to know ourselves,
from the beginning,
hung.
Brotherhood over the void.
Ideas scatter,
the ghosts remain to be continued. . . . . .